Places / Seeking You
Jean-Julien Pous’ Seeking You is an animated love letter to the city of Hong Kong. It presses all the same buttons as Blade Runner and In the Mood for Love, with a touch of Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s gothic style, and though it’s really amazing eye candy, it also smacks of creepy, orientalist expat. Here, an entire Asian city is exoticized, fetishized, and finally anthropomorphized in a rather unsubtle way. Why are so many creepy old European dudes so lecherous when it comes to Asia?
Tagged: Chinese films, Hong Kong
RELATED
I spent last weekend at the New York Film Festival watching director Wong Ka-Wai’s inspiring lecture and premier of Ashes Of Time Redux, the remastered, re-edited, re-scored 1994 Hong Kong classic. It was just drop-dead gorgeous and painfully beautiful. Words fail me. Wong Ka-Wai is just pure genius. It opens Friday in New York City. Don’t miss it.
WeMe Creative has an awesome new female tee available called All About Me, featuring ‘pattern wrap over’ printing. Read more
As a special offer to our readers, the very cool Illiterate tee — designed by WeMe Creative, a group based in Hong Kong and Sydney — is now available just $30 through the Lost At E Minor online store.
Also by GERRY MAK
Aurie Ramirez’s elegant watercolors have something outsider-y about them, with a slight nod of Henry Darger, but the fantasy world she depicts is less manic and angry — the whimsical and characters that inhabit her work seem more playful and less tormented by religious repression. Read more
Like any fan of a genre, I can’t stand bands that water down the basic elements of said genre in order to make it more accessible to the masses. I used to consider Gojira one of these bands, but it may be because I couldn’t get past their lame album covers. To be honest, they’re still a little too influenced by hardcore on their new album, but I have to admit, the debut video from The Way of All Flesh is brutal as hell. As a matter of fact, the tracks that the French four-piece is streaming on its MySpace page are pretty freaking incredible — unapologetically death metal, but with a few left-field elements, and again, some hardcore-isms with the vocals I could do without. I have to stop being so prejudiced.
There are two Americas: one which strives to create its own culture, music, and art with a strong sense of ethics in mind, and another that drinks 32-ounce energy drinks before waiting on line to get into a club packed with women trying to get back at their overbearing fathers, and homophobic men with a fondness for Axe body spray. How do we bridge the divide?
YOU'RE SAYING (3)
Janice said | 30 May, 2008
actually the chinese characters mean “seek you” i.e. “seeking you”, i.e. exactly the same as the english name
Gerry said | 31 May, 2008
Sorry. It looked like “wo” at first glance because the second stroke goes right through. Honest mistake. I still think the guy is a creep.
HAVE YOUR SAY
Tim Lee’s illustrations are wonderfully intricate and precise, a tangled world of escapism and realism mixed into one. Read more
I’ve heard whispers that Kings Of Convenience, the Norwegian duo of folkloric proportions, have split. I hope they’re unfounded, but like all good rumours, where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Perhaps Erland Oye is enjoying the unlimited scope of his solo career too much? And then there’s his new submorphic guitar pop project, The Whitest Boy Alive, to keep him occupied. The whitest boy alive? Indeed he is. But damn the guy can sing.
Australian group Pivot have recently signed with the mighty Warp label and — even better (well, for us anyway) — have written a fun Secret Playlist for us. You can see where the many disparate influences have seeped into their latest recording, the beautiful and colourful, O Soundtrack My Heart.
We have a bunch of new playlists up on our sister site, My Secret Playlist, a music discovery website and weekly email publication in which we invite our favourite bands and musicians to give us the rundown on their eight favourite songs right now. Over the past few weeks, acts such as The B52s, Team Genius, Pivot, Jukebox the Ghost, Moby, Katy Perry, and the Dandy Warhols, among many others, have written about the music that inspires them. To sign-up to receive the weekly My Secret Playlist publication, just enter your email address into the website’s subscription box.
London-based illustrator Kerry Roper is fortunate enough to work mainly in the music and fashion industry. His art combines traditional illustration, photography and typography. He scored the lucrative Snickers campaign in America and has been featured in many books and magazines.
I interviewed the mysterious Suitman some time ago for the Australian magazine, Riot. Even then it was clear that, with his immaculately pressed suit and crisp white shirts, he was an icon - both stylistically and conceptually. So it’s no surprise to hear about his latest adventure, The New Grand Tour, ‘an episodic art project featuring revolving guest artists with hyphenated cultural and geographical backgrounds. Read more
The t-shirt range of Lollipop Loretta is essentially a bright and bubbly collection of wearable art. There are only two of each shirt in each size and the illustrative monster characters are printed on quality American Apparel shirts. Fun! Read more
WE'RE POSTING / SOME OF THE BEST
When it comes to making an entrance, nothing says rock star quite like a pair of leather pants. Read more
Micah P. Hinson takes the good with the bad
We said a few weeks back that Micah P. Hinson is ‘like every rustic, broken down, and pieced back together country great that’s ever been. Only hipper and slightly less sombre’. With that in mind, we spoke to him recently and asked him whether his hometown of Texas was a difficult place for a young, aspiring musician to grow up in: Read more
Dalton Trumbo was the first blacklisted writer to win an Academy Award. However, he could not claim the award until years later because he had been forced to write under a pseudonym. Trumbo was one of the Hollywood Ten and even spent a year in jail as a result of investigations into Communist influences in the motion picture industry. This documentary is fascinating not just for its examination of a bizarre period in American history where fear replaced reason and innocent men were jailed, but also for how Trumbo dealt with these hardships. Read more
Amanda Yoakum is the creative whirlwind behind YoaKustoms, customised sneakers which stand as ‘an artistic expression rather than just a factory look’. We dig these kicks like we haven’t dug kicks in a long, long time. Read more
The directorial debut of John August, a writer who was worked on films such as Go, Big Fish and Corpse Bride, is a complex and thought-provoking arthouse feature crowned with a spectacular performance by Ryan Reynolds in the lead role. Like most films, it is in three parts. However, these are three distinct parts with the same actors all playing different roles. Read more
Warning at Work is a silkscreen mini-print from Sussex based illustrator Andy Smith which comes in a limited edition of just 50. Dimensions are 20cm x 15cm. We have them available through the Lost At E Minor store.
Read more
Happy, happy, joy, joy! We have a TV On The Radio poster designed by Tunde, as well as Dear Science on vinyl, to give away to a randomly selected Lost At E Minor subscriber who leaves a comment under this post telling us why they simply must have it.
DISCOVER MORE
SO...
TAGS: acoustic music animals animation Australian bands black and white illustrations black and white photography blogs Brooklyn Brooklyn artists Brooklyn bands cartoons China collaboration colour colourful illustrations comics electronic music flash games folk music Hip Hop Japan London Los Angeles magazines Melbourne New York New York artists New York bands New York illustrators New York photographers pop music portrait portraits prints rock music San Francisco soul music street art street fashion surrealism Sydney t-shirts technology typography UK bands
POPULAR:
- Marc Collin: My Secret Playlist!' - loved 60 times
- Brittanie Pendleton - loved 48 times
- Elaine Biss's feminine charms - loved 25 times
- Ed Harcourt: 'My Secret Playlist' - loved 22 times
- Prefab House - loved 19 times
- Andreco's brilliant visions - loved 18 times
- I Give Up On T-Shirts - loved 16 times
SEARCH: Can't find what you're looking for? Do a search..
IS IT GOOD FOR YOU TOO?
We hope you're enjoying your time on Lost At E Minor, but it’s not over yet. Got something to share? Tell us about it and we'll look to publish it. If you want to have your work featured on the site, we'd love to hear from you. Or if you’d just like to talk amongst yourselves, that’s cool too. Pssst, we also have an online store stocking some of the goodies we feature on the site.
If you're a media agency and want to use this platform to connect with our readership, then drop us a line and tell us about it. Oh yeah, and we do digital consulting for cool brands that want to reach the sort of demographic that visits this site.










Jean-Julien Pous said | 28 May, 2008
I just wanted to leave a comment as I stumbled upon this article… I’m 24, French, born in China, and not so creepy-old-orientalist-expat. In fact I first came in Hong Kong as a student to complete my highschool years. I wanted to illustrate a strong desire for the city, and this desire expressed through its intense climate : strong smell, very hot and humid air… Let the viewers make their mind.